Why insist that only the Olympics will do? Toronto should take on international events, do them well - and the world will notice.

Get over it, Toronto. You are not big league, king of the hill, Canada’s calling-card city. At every opportunity, the rest of the country drives home this point.

The discussion this week about a future bid for Expo 2025 underscores Toronto’s lack of clout at home and abroad. And there’s no sense tackling the world before you score small victories at home.

Even as Toronto’s movers and shakers of all political stripes hustle to complete a feasibility study that would reveal the huge social and economic and city-building benefits of hosting the World’s Fair, the Stephen Harper federal government is busy pulling out the rug from under the city’s feet.

The federal Conservatives, concerned about the deficit, are intent on saving the annual $25,000 fee paid to the governing body of the World’s Fairs — not to mention the millions involved in mounting pavilions at the Expos, basically every five years.

Toronto’s response is to remind the feds that they’ll get back all of the expenditure in taxes generated from the event, so why step over a dollar to save a few pennies? At least, that’s the elegant way Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam described it at a news conference at city hall.

The coalition includes three former Toronto mayors, Mayor Rob Ford, and all the big-name candidates considering a run for mayor of Toronto next year. Such a consensus is rare.

The world rejects our Olympic bids — see failed attempts at the 1996 and 2008 Games and stillborn attempts at 1960, 1964 and 1976.

Now, our own governments seem embarrassed at our Expo bid, with Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong dismissing Expo as “the Better Living Centre (CNE) on steroids” during a city council debate on its merits last June. Ouch.

Minan-Wong and others believe Toronto should go after the very elite events or don’t bother at all. The glamour and attraction of the Olympics is unmatched. Torontonians are interested in the 2015 Pan Am Games only because the event is in Toronto, he says; and he may be right.

But having said that, where does the city go? If Toronto can’t compete with European capitals or world cities like Beijing, Atlanta, Seoul, Rio, Sydney — and Montreal, Vancouver, and, er, Calgary — should the city just be content with the CNE?

To do so would be to doom the city to the glacial pace of infrastructure improvements of recent times. Like it or not, international events provide a deadline, a timeline and an urgency to accomplish in years what might otherwise take decades.

How long has the city talked about fixing up Union Station? Completing a direct link between the airport and downtown? Subway expansion? It’s no wild coincidence that these projects have legs currently as the Pan Am Games approach in 2015.

The Pan Ams are a second-tier, maybe third-tier sporting event. The plight of a beta city is it has to prove its mettle in the valley before it’s propelled to the top of the mountain. Put on a spectacularly successful Pan Am Games, and Toronto’s name will be forever linked to its excellence.

Such an approach takes time. It will be 40 or 50 years before Toronto becomes a legitimate threat to win an Olympic Games. But getting there — and using smaller events to build critical infrastructure — will serve the city well while it waits for its international curtain call.

Across the globe, nations have pride in their principal city. Here, Toronto’s every effort to engender the same is greeted with local skepticism and national cynicism. Or is that reversed?

It may not be fair. It’s certainly maddening to the many boosters who see great potential in this city. But it’s the way it is, so a multi-pronged strategy is needed.

One: Continue to explore every opportunity to stage a World’s Fair or an Olympics. If you don’t run, you can’t win.

Two: Link as many infrastructure improvements as possible to large and smaller international events. Critics argue the city should not wait for an Olympics or Expo to revitalize its waterfront. That’s true. But no one is blind to the reality that these events are once-in-a-lifetime catalysts.

Three: Be brilliant every time the world comes calling — at TIFF, professional sports all-star games, World Pride, Caribana, Pan Am Games 2015.

Soon — 40 years is a short time — the world will know what we already do. Toronto is a terrific host to the world.

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